1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a computer program product for the information processing.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is a need to reduce the amount of paper resources used when printing a document using a printer. Through a print setting screen, a printer driver allows for settings for combined printing, which enables the printing of multiple pages (2, 4, 6, 9, and 16 pages) to be allocated on a single sheet, and for two-sided printing that enables printing on the front and back sides of a single sheet. This technology has been applied as a layout technique for changing the combining order in which multiple pages are arranged from upper left to lower right or from upper right to lower left.
During combined printing and two-sided printing, if a printer driver or print processor rotates or reduces a page to be printed, the pass-through system does not rotate or reduce characters or graphics, which results in a printed result that the user did not desire. However, there is a known technology in which a printer performs combined printing and two-sided printing so as to solve the above problem that occurs with the pass-through system.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2008-227584 discloses an image processing apparatus that displays a preview image that represents a result that is obtained by setting, to image data, a process, such as combined printing, that is selected from various setting process items so that the layout of documents allocated for the combined printing is set in accordance with user's instructions.
If the printer performs combined printing and two-sided printing in a conventional manner, different layouts are applied to the front and back sides of a printing sheet, which is due to the documents containing pages having different orientations, i.e., portrait orientations and landscape orientations. Thus, there is a problem in that the document is not printed out in the layout intended by the user.